11 Much-Hyped Tech Features That Aren’t Worth the Money

Tech companies go to great lengths to foster the illusion that they are not actually tech companies. Rather, they'd have you believe they're a merry band of digital craftspeople bonded by the single-minded pursuit of delivering to you—their beloved customer—a magical gadget that will improve your life.

To be sure, tech companies do invest a lot of time and resources creating their products. But let us never lose sight that tech companies are not in this for the love. They are not your family. They are not your friends. They are amoral, for-profit entities whose whole raison d'etre is to part you from your money.

Each time these companies introduce a new product, they hope it will compel you to head down to Best Buy and fork over hundreds—if not thousands—of your hard-earned dollars. Whether that device actually ends up improving your life in some meaningful way afterwards is not their concern.

Tech companies are under pressure to constantly deliver newer, better products. But sometimes, their R&D teams can't quite get there. But that sure won't stop them from trying to convince you otherwise.

There are dozens of examples of needless flourishes that are very specific to particular brands, but we've isolated 11 that we see again and again across the board. Don't fall for it, people. Newer, bigger, better is all well and good. Just don't make us pay extra for it.

Fancy Phone Designs

Sorry, Jony Ive. All those sleepless hours spent perfecting the iPhone's sinewy rounded corners and Apple-worthy hues were for naught, you design nerd. The cell phone accessory market, led by phone cases, will be a $107.3 billion business by 2022, according to Allied Market Research. effectively nullifying all those minute design obsessions.

A smartphone is a not-insignificant financial investment; you'd be foolish not to protect it from the bumps, scratches, and occasional oops that will most definitely befall it. Apple certainly isn't the only company that uses external phone design as a selling point. But once a case comes into play, your phone's exterior will be seen about as much as its interior. Do you want to pay a premium for that?

2

'Exclusive' Video Game Titles

When you buy an "EXCLUSIVE" vidya game for your console, there are probably some additional caveats out there you should be aware of. Microsoft and Sony are so caught up in their own console war that they often choose to forget non-console platforms. For example, the box art for Street Fighter V included the designation "PS4 CONSOLE EXCLUSIVE GAME," but neglected to mention that the game is also available for PC via Steam. So, while SFV is indeed not available on the Xbox, it can be played on Windows and Linux PCs. Often, console titles listed as "exclusives" neglect to include the PC versions. It's not "lying" as much as it's massaging the truth by ignoring some key details.

3

Large Megapixel Cameras

One of the most direct ways to discern the quality of a digital camera is to compare megapixel counts, right? As it turns out, not so much.

Let's start by defining "megapixels." The prefix mega = one million, so megapixels equals the number of millions of pixels a camera sensor can capture for a particular image (i.e. a 10-megapixel image contains 10 million pixels, an 18-megapixel image contains 18 million, etc.) But there's more to great photos than just numbers.

While megapixel counts on phones can contribute to better images, they only matter up to a point. When you look at an image on your tiny phone display or print it out, millions of extra pixels cease making a difference. So, insane megaxpixel counts end up being of little use to the average consumer. "Camera megapixel count above eight is often a red herring," according to our lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan. "Especially on phones, optics and image processing matter so much more. The debate between 12-, 13-, and 16- megapixel cameras actually means little or nothing to real-life use."

4

Smartphone Display Pixel Density

I predict that if any readers feel compelled to leave comments disagreeing with any points in this story, this will probably be the slide that prompts them to do so: Pixel densities on smartphones are WAY overrated—after a certain point. I know there are people out there who swear that ever-increasing pixel counts on displays truly make a difference (some in this very office). I respectfully disagree.

I think tiny smartphone displays reached peak "good enough" a few years ago when Apple intro'd the 300ppi Retina display. And since then, there has been an escalating spec war in which each new salvo has failed to impress me in any meaningful way.

I'm currently rocking a Samsung Galaxy S7 with a 577 ppi display. And it's great! And it appears that Samsung may have come around to my side of things—the Galaxy S8's screen specs don't pack in any more pixels beyond the S6 (or even a few less, depending on how you measure things). This is a wise move on Samsung's part IMHO. It means the S8's upgraded processor can deliver even better performance by not having to deal with even more pixels.

5

Millimeters of Thinness

Remember those Apple TV ads that showed how the iPad Air was thinner than a No. 2 pencil? The reveal promo for the iPad Air 2, which debuted the following year, showed a pencil being sliced length-wise with a laser to demonstrate how this new generation was even thinner (0.29 inches versus 0.24 inches to be exact.) I actually have an Air 2 and am very happy with it. Personally, I was never burdened by that extra .05 inches of thickness.

Many mobile manufacturers are quick to brag about how they are able to shave off millimeters of size. And when it comes to mobile, smaller and lighter tends to be better—certainly compared to the clunky mobile devices of old. But we hit "good enough" territory many years ago. I don't need my devices to be any thinner—I'd much prefer manufacturers make better use of the space they have to make the thing run even better for longer.

6

How Much RAM Do You Really Need?

Mobile fans were blown away when it was announced that the OnePlus 5 would come with an astounding 8GB of RAM (in its highest-end model). Holy moly that's a lot of RAM! Most marquee phones, such as Samsung's Galaxy S8 max out at 4GB of RAM and run great. So, the OnePlus 5 must be absolutely explosive, right!?! Sure. But why exactly?

Some people disagree, but there's not a lot you can do with that much RAM. In theory, it would help with multi-tasking. But how much simultaneous heavy lifting are you really doing on your phone? Do you really need to be streaming a TV show on Hulu, listening to an album on Spotify, and playing Pokemon Go all at the same time?

In theory, this sort of beyond-bleeding edge spec future-proofs your device for things like Google Tango/ARCore, but by the time these beefy future features become a thing that you will absolutely need to have in your digital life, it'll be a time to buy a new phone.

7

Automaker In-Dash Systems

By all accounts, Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay are capable on-the-road ecosystems, now that they're finally available. Some major automakers have accepted the fact that Google and Apple can probably handle UX better than they can, and have started incorporating these systems into their cars. But not all of them. While some systems from Detroit may one day end up being as good as those from Silicon Valley, I have my doubts. So, to all the automakers out there, Apple and Google know how to do software and interface—please stop wasting your time attempting to do your own thing (or, at least, don't expect us to pay extra for it).

8

Not Everything Needs to Be Connected

The jury is still out on whether the public is ready to trust a smart house hooked into the Internet of Things. But that hasn't stopped a small army of upstart manufacturers from attempting to get their ticket on the connected train.

To be sure, there are some very cool "connected" products out there (even if they are still figuring out that whole security thing), but not everything needs to be hooked into The Matrix. There is not yet a compelling reason for the smart toilet to exist. We may one day want the ability to control our toilet seat's temperature remotely through an app, but that time is not now. It's okay for some things to remain analog.

Special Editions

Do yourself a favor and DON'T download that extended "Unrated" version of that comedy you like. You may think it will contain some real raunchy stuff that kept things a little too real for the MPAA ratings board. It doesn't. It just has some additional scenes that were left out of the final cut (oftentimes, with good reason), and the studio didn't get the new edit officially re-rated. (Probably so they could push the new "Unrated" cut to fools like YOU.) Don't fall for it.

Also, DON'T pay extra to stream or download that Re-mastered album from your favorite band. It will sound exactly the same as the version you're used to (in fact, there's a real possibility it will sound worse).

Basically any "special editions" you see out there are (often) cynical attempts to get you to purchase or rent an album or movie a second time.

10

Gaming Mice's Glowing Logos

Generally speaking, quality design is something worth paying a premium for. But just like the aforementioned, over-hyped phone designs wasted underneath a case, the aesthetics of your mouse doesn't matter because it's being smothered by your palm.

Today, many top gaming mice manufacturers insist on including light-up logos directly on the palm rest. Ooh shiny! Often, these LEDs are customizable and can interact with the gameplay, which is kinda cool. This functionality may have some utility with the lighting mechanisms on the mouse's side or belly, but is completely wasted underneath your big fat opaque hand.

It's difficult to say if these luminescent trappings actually adds much to the price tag, but a more minimalist aesthetic would almost certainly minimize the price as well.

11

8K TVs (Jumping in Early)

I've made my case against the escalating pixel wars earlier in this piece. So, I feel obligated to jump in the next chapter a bit early. While the price on 4K TVs are coming down, the next format is already being prepared: 8K, a resolution standard with twice as many pixels as 4K and four times as many as HD. That's a lot of pixels!

There are some ludicrously expensive 8K displays already for sale. And even if you had the money to purchase a functioning 8K TV, it'd be a waste—there's no content for it (there's still a limited supply of 4K content right now).

To be sure, we'll start seeing consumer-grade 8K TVs and content within the next 10 years. But I'll take a stand now. I've seen 4K TVs, and they're aight. It hasn't made me contemplate breaking my HDTV just so I'll have an excuse to buy one.

Check Also

In recent days, word about Nvidia’s new Turing architecture started leaking out of the Santa Clara-based company’s headquarters. So it didn’t come as a major surprise that the company today announced during its Siggraph keynote the launch of this new architecture and three new pro-oriented workstation graphics cards in its Quadro family.
Nvidia describes the new Turing architecture as “the greatest leap since the invention of the CUDA GPU in 2006.” That’s a high bar to clear, but there may be a kernel of truth here. These new Quadro RTx chips are the first to feature the company’s new RT Cores. “RT” here stands for ray tracing, a rendering method that basically traces the path of light as it interacts with the objects in a scene. This technique has been around for a very long time (remember POV-Ray on the Amiga?). Traditionally, though, it was always very computationally intensive, though the results tend to look far more realistic. In recent years, ray tracing got a new boost thanks to faster GPUs and support from the likes of Microsoft, which recently added ray tracing support to DirectX.
“Hybrid rendering will change the industry, opening up amazing possibilities that enhance our lives with more beautiful designs, richer entertainment and more interactive experiences,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “The arrival of real-time ray tracing is the Holy Grail of our industry.”
The new RT cores can accelerate ray tracing by up to 25 times compared to Nvidia’s Pascal architecture, and Nvidia claims 10 GigaRays a second for the maximum performance.
Unsurprisingly, the three new Turing-based Quadro GPUs will also feature the company’s AI-centric Tensor Cores, as well as 4,608 CUDA cores that can deliver up to 16 trillion floating point operations in parallel with 16 trillion integer operations per second. The chips feature GDDR6 memory to expedite things, and support Nvidia’s NVLink technology to scale up memory capacity to up to 96GB and 100GB/s of bandwidth.
The AI part here is more important than it may seem at first. With NGX, Nvidia today also launched a new platform that aims to bring AI into the graphics pipelines. “NGX technology brings capabilities such as taking a standard camera feed and creating super slow motion like you’d get from a $100,000+ specialized camera,” the company explains, and also notes that filmmakers could use this technology to easily remove wires from photographs or replace missing pixels with the right background.
On the software side, Nvidia also today announced that it is open sourcing its Material Definition Language (MDL).
Companies ranging from Adobe (for Dimension CC) to Pixar, Siemens, Black Magic, Weta Digital, Epic Games and Autodesk have already signed up to support the new Turing architecture.
All of this power comes at a price, of course. The new Quadro RTX line starts at $2,300 for a 16GB version, while stepping up to 24GB will set you back $6,300. Double that memory to 48GB and Nvidia expects that you’ll pay about $10,000 for this high-end card.

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